medical assistant

software engineer

retail sales associate

production operator

machine operator

Lifetime Products, Inc.

For those of you who are working through a temp agency such as Spherion, Elwood, etc., here is what to expect from a job at Lifetime on the production line packaging basketball hoops at building C11:

Pay is $12/hr. Overtime is time and a half. Schedule is 7:30am-4pm for Day Shift (some Saturdays required, more info below). Lunch is 11:00-11:30. Break is 1:45-2:00. Break room has tables, an industrial sized fridge, and about 10 microwaves. Vending machines are present as well. You're able to leave the facility during lunch (during which you clock out), but not during break (stay on the clock). Fast food options are often far enough away that you have to really rush it if you want to buy lunch. Or just go to the Maverick across the street from the exit to the Freeport Center.

Co-workers are constantly changing. Turnover is fairly high. You start off as a temp, you have the ability to be hired on full time after 420 hours and good attendance. Not able to recieve benefits or profit sharing until hired on as a full-time employee. The people you work with will vary from chill to downright deplorable. Lots of abrasive language being used. Supervisors and employees do not follow manager's policies on line speed or behavior (constant safety violations). People are always trying to rush the line, causing bottlenecking, line stop, and flared tempers. On your feet all day long, not allowed to sit. You're able to have your phone on you, playing audio (but only through specific OSHA-approved earbuds that you have to buy for $25 at Fastenal at building F5). Otherwise, ear protection is not required nor provided. Will sometimes get reprimanded for not being able to hear. Will get reprimanded for taking phone out for any reason, including choosing music. They tell you to have a playlist ready to go.

During the winter months, prepare to bundle up. It gets cold. No experience with warmer months. Make sure you have comfortable steel-toed shoes. Gloves and safety glasses provided. It is recommended you also buy your own hard hat, as the ones provided on the line are swapped around peoples' heads regularly.

Consistently under-staffed due to poor workplace culture and management. Some favoritism observed. Start time is 7:30 but they want you to be there at 7:25 (understandable). Concept is applied to breaks. They end lunch and break 5 mins early, they start the line right at the posted end times (11:30 and 2:00). Supervisors will always tell you to hurry for everything, no matter how much downtime there is. If the conveyor is stopped after 3:30, every minute it is stopped contributes to a minute stayed after 4.

Regarding Saturdays, you won't know whether or not you work on a Saturday until the end of the day on Friday. Extremely inconvenient, but very, very rare. If production schedule is unable to be finished, they will try to go overtime during the week before resorting to working on a Saturday. 

You will have 3 different jobs in a workday, cycling through different line positions so you aren't doing the same thing for 8 hours. Work is monotonous and repetitive, sometimes tiring depending on the position.

Recommended if you need to make some quick money to pay the bills while looking for another job. Or if you're saving up for school. Also good for ex-cons or people with overall difficulty securing a job due to their background. No customer interaction.

Thick skin and ability to focus on menial and physically demanding tasks for extended periods of time is a recommended attribute.

I worked graveyard in the shipping dept. for 2.5 months

This company has a great starting pay, but the pay cap is just $4 higher than that. They try to make up for it by offering overtime and a profitshare program to fulltime employees, but what they end up asking for is your life in exchange for pennies.

 The long time fulltimers (3 years+) are generally known as guys who worked really hard initially but now adopt a "get-by" attitude. They aren't very encouraging. They're sad. They have knowledge but can't apply it because the company is afraid of mistakes (likely due to a low budget from being overstaffed).

 This company is unwilling to trust in its employees so the employees reciprocate it. The company is not cohesive in its decisions. "I didnt get the memo"- you hear this alot. They give responsibility to employees simply because they're there and the responsibility has to fall on somebody. This leads to incompetence and there is a lack of accountability when someones demanding it. There are extreme inventory errors in their computer programs thats most likely being taken advantage of. In order to be eligible for raises, you must submit personal ideas which have to approved to consider you eligible.

 Of the two leads, shipping supervisor, and WMS specialist, it was one lead and the wms specialist that were actually knowledgable in day-to-day procedures, technical issues, and company policies. The other lead and shipping supervisor were good at telling people what to do, and thats about it. There is major incompetence there that two hardworking individuals are currently making up for in terms of slack.

 The company culture is vastly unprofessional as long as the big boss isn't present. The company policies in day-to-day procedures are designed to fool-proof any given task, making it easy but frustrating once you understand procedure. This is a good company to work for if you're just starting out on a forklift, but not a place to consider anything long-term.

Lifetime is a profit driven company that cares very little about the employees.  They will do whatever it takes to get more production out of you without giving you more compensation.  They give you the bare minimum amount of money that they can, and make you sign vast non-compete agreements so that any experience you gain there is almost impossible to use at another company.  They make it sound good with things like profit sharing, but in reality, they cook the books every year to make it as small as possible.  The work environment is very small cubicles with big brother constantly watching over your shoulder.  Everything is timed and reported, and as a professional engineer, it is like I am treated like I am in kindergarten.  Employees must fill out weekly improvement ideas, but are judged harshly if they don't fit the corporate culture.  Sales is king and engineers are looked down on and expected to have no say in the process, just produce massive amounts of work on time or else.  Suggesting improvements you are not specifically asked for is very much against the corporate culture.  Most of management is there because they are the best ones at getting ahead though nefarious means, not because they are good at their job.  And they seem to be afraid of anyone under them with new ideas.  Their job seems to be to suck your soul out of you for their profit.  They are very poor also at training or keeping their computer system up and running well.  Much of the day seems to be wasted waiting for slow programs to work.   Most engineers feel trapped with no way to escape, but almost everyone has a side hustle which they hope will be their ticket out of there.  Some of the nicest people I have met work for Lifetime, and they are treated very poorly.  

A typical day at the office....  well to be honest I loved my job as an International Purchasing agent.  I loved the fact that I was able to work with all the individual countries and the opportunity to meet and work with each and every one of the other suppliers. I also loved learning how each of these companies operate thru their order flow and currencies, including the different exchange rates and inflation issues as well as the strikes on the docks here in the USA.  I loved learning how the tariff, tax and duties were applied as well as the international logistics.  However, the hardest part is when a new manager is assigned to an area and they are unqualified for the area or didn't know a thing about what the other employees do for the company.  They are simply placed in that position because they are family of a higher up and they need a job.  These are the struggles of working for Lifetime Products.  This happens on more than one occasion.  Other issues are Lifetime Products is a big company but it is a family owned company and it seems like they don't know how to transfer from the family owned style to a corporation style to help ensure the life of the company and instead they rather promote and hire family members instead of qualified individuals that don't fit their family mold.  In return of doing this they push out qualified individuals simply because one of the family members do not like that person regardless if that individual is great for the company. So with this said I would have to say that Lifetime Products would have to work on their management areas.  On another note, I know that I have spoken ill of Lifetime Products but really all in all they are not really that bad to work for they do have some very good qualities about them the co-workers are great to work with and the learning experience if given the right one can be challenging and great.

A typical day working at lifetime in the shipping department, we would start our days off with a pre-shift of who was assigned to what tasks and to which warehouse and you would start pulling product receiving product or staging product, depending on what you were assigned to you were also given specific goals to complete by the end of the day and most times that wouldn’t work out because you were either helping somebody else that a Lead or supervisor told you to help or You would run into multiple small issues that would slow you down significantly what I believe I learned at my job besides time management is that no matter how hard you work they always wanted you to work harder. There was a lot of favoritism that if you messed up on something and they didn’t like you, you would get in trouble, but if another person did that they did like they would just sweep it underneath the rug that happened on the daily basis if you wanted to go for a promotion like I did I’ve been there for five years and I went for five or six promotions and each time I got denied because I wasn’t a favorite, even though I broke records at work got work done was always the number one person they would call to help somebody else out because they knew I can do the job of three what are the worst things that I’ve heard at my work to is my supervisor and my manager both telling me in a group of other people that we are replaceable I am very upset to know that I no longer work at lifetime shipping department because it was a nice place to work for the people and how the job was but management was the worst. They always expected the best and the number one thing that you could never have at that job was minor human error


Initially coming back to Lifetime, I was excited. I had worked there before as a temp agent, and always gave 100% every day, working harder then most other employees. Management when I came back was the same as when I left, and I have to admit, they were absolutely astonishing. This changed abruptly however, when my original direct manager was let go, followed by a second and third manager leaving the company. It only went down hill from there.I had at that point climbed to a higher position, regarding Quality of the products. The stress from this however, took a massive physical and mental toll on me. Management was always keen on getting product moving and getting things done, but seemed to lack the organization and proper interaction skills with the production workers, as well as other members of management. I personally ended up leaving the job after about 6 months, due to having developed Severe Anxiety and High Blood Pressure associated with the constant stress. Everyday was a question of "what has gone wrong this time, and who is going to be blamed." That, coupled with the newly hired management, did not end well for anyone, especially myself. The entire site went from being a fun and caring establishment and an awesome place to work, to being overall miserable and just another slog in a matter of weeks. I would not recommend going here to work anymore, as the culture and environment have changed so drastically, and not for the better.

This a great job if you only want part time. They advertise as part time / full time but there is little to no chance of you becoming full time. They are willing to work with school schedules for the most part. There is no chance of you moving up in to management. ( they hire from the out side).  A lot is expected of you with little in return. This is the type of job where it is better to do only what is asked of you, don’t bother going above and beyond. There is nothing in it for you in return. Pay is okay to start out but don’t expect raises you will stay at hiring rates for quite some time. For the most part the other associates that you will work are great, but managers are another story. Many of them have you do the work then tell corporate it was them. Most managers are very unhelpful and uninformed. They make you call up to corporate to get the answers you need, and offer no help on who to call.  They do provide health care after you have worked a year but it is very expensive and not much coverage. A regular day is helping customers one on one, ringing up customer, loading them up by either fork lifting  or carrying  products in to vehicles, and daily cleaning tasks. 

As a line worker, you will be working around blow-mold machines, with several different plastic parts. It's not always the same thing everyday, but some things are similar. cutting excess plastic, drilling holes, etc. The watersports division is a favorite to work in, as it offers more diverse processes. You'll learn to use various tools, including drills, hole punches, plastic scrapers, and torches;. Most of the time, the atmosphere is laid back. For example, vulgar language isn't really frowned upon, and the dress code is fairly open. between August and December is the slow season, which pretty much means a lot of sweeping. During the faster season overtime saturdays will become a regular thing. This job is very big on safety and quality. If you want to excell here, you'll need to be quick. They allow direct hires to wear plug phones, which are ear plugs that can play music. They might not be as loud as normal earphones, but music helps. Overall it's hard work, but they do their best to treat their emplyees well.

A typical day at work begins with complete chaos that they think is organized. They don’t pay the correct teams what they should be paid. The off shifts get to do what they want with little repercussions, and they get paid the most and do less then half the same amount of work that day shifts teams do. There is no job security at all unless you suck up to the right people. HR talks to you like you are a child but yet says they are there for you, when in reality they aren’t and only care about the company and themselves. High rate of turnover in all departments.  What they expect from you as an employee changes by the second. I know every job has its drama and stuff to deal with, but this by far is the worse yet I’ve ever experienced anywhere. Why do I stay? Simple: because I have to pay bills and have insurance and I like some of my coworkers, and although I should make more then I do it’s still the best I’ve made yet although it took me years to get to the pay I have. I am currently looking for a new job however because I can’t keep overlooking the stuff they pull and the way they make you feel.  This is my raw truth on working for this company. 

In my most recent job as puller over hardware my job was to keep 7-8 lines of production moving.  I brought them parts, made the orders, so that the change overs would not cause downtime.  I communicated with the forklift drivers, supervisors, and employees to keep things moving when machines broke, parts that were ordered were not delivered, when suppliers shipments did not come in, and when anything else that would stop the line went wrong.  I had to multitask and balance bringing people on lines parts to keep them going, while making the order and doing inventory to check to see if next order could be filled.  As well as setting up the next run and trouble shooting problems that occurred.  I worked through breaks and lunches frequently eating while i did the paperwork. I was also in charge of making sure that 15 temps understood there station and were doing okay.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Medical assistant 9 salaries reported	$28.50 per hour
Software engineer 5 salaries reported	$71,600 per year
Retail sales associate 4 salaries reported	$14.75 per hour
Production operator 4 salaries reported	$16.25 per hour
Machine operator 3 salaries reported	$19.50 per hour

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